September 2012 Earnings Thread

[leaf]

Here's my graph.

Interesting notes for me are...
iStock has been 11-12% all year and this month they dropped to 8% in sept.  My iStock earnings in sept were the worst month of the year!
Alamy had a good month, up about 2% to 6% of my total income and
DepositPhotos climbed up 1% in the overall earnings

Last month was my BME by about 6% .. so pretty similar to previous months.

... and don't forget to vote.. there is some interesting developments recently in regards to the placements of a few sites in the poll results
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?page=microstockmonthlysurvey

[nicku]

Overall September was my BME  - with 10% increase compared with my last BME,

Agencies:

SS - BME ; I love this agency , first month when i pass 1k downloads, lots of EL, OD and SO...
DT - very, very good month - the best month in the last year. 
FT - average 
123RF - average 

The pie slices:

SS - 60%
DT - 20% ( first time in a loong period of time when DT came over FT)
FT - 12%
123 RF - 5%
The rest - 3%

Hope Oct. will be even better....

[ClaridgeJ]

Slow start but then brillant September. Great at SS and DT, even IS show a great increase plus the icing on the cake: 14, Rm sales with two pics netting, 6K.
Not complaining at all.

sadly, FT which used to be a great earner is on its way out, at least for me. Oh well cant have it all I suppose.

[Anyka]

Wow, look at Depositphotos moving up!  Well, they were my only site with a BME this month, so they deserve to move up.
My big 3 (SS-FT-DS) went down with more than 10% compared to last year September.  Istock went up, but only because of the partner program downloads.  ALL smaller sites went up and covered a lot of the loss.  However, in September 2011 SS gave me 14 EL's (!), and this September 5.  Just keeping my fingers crossed for October.

[hofhoek]

Wow, look at Depositphotos moving up!  Well, they were my only site with a BME this month, so they deserve to move up.
My big 3 (SS-FT-DS) went down with more than 10% compared to last year September.  Istock went up, but only because of the partner program downloads.  ALL smaller sites went up and covered a lot of the loss.  However, in September 2011 SS gave me 14 EL's (!), and this September 5.  Just keeping my fingers crossed for October.

I'm not too happy about DP moving up. They pay almost as bad as Istock (moving up in sales but 75% of those from the partner program).

[rubyroo]

OK... well I'm down about 20% from last month.  Last month was a pretty astounding BME though... would've been lovely to have repeated it... but it looks as though my average is still my average... which is fine, but at the same time... 

I'm marginally up on Sept 2011 though, so that's a happier note.

Top four for this month were:

1. SS (as ever!)
2. iStock
3. Dreamstime
4. 123RF

[dreamstock]

BME

[marnads]

Since I started as a microstocker, every month has been a BME and september is no exception.. Hope this lasts forever!

[cthoman]

Down from August, but still my 7th BME.

[modviz]

SS      - by a country mile
123RF - BME
DP      - down from August's BME but decent.
DT      - dead, deader, deadest. A reflection of what you've
            been witnessing in the poll results. My best agency in
            2011. My worst agency in 2012. Weren't they sitting
            around 30% late last year? And for those of you who
            are going to respond with a BME or reasonable facimile;
            look at the microstock poll. The truth in black and white.
            THEY know they have to turn the ship around. My suggestion
            would be to re-adopt 2011 tactics.

[Bauman]

9 months of Microstock

Avg port 281 img

SS 100%
FT 46% -> BME
IS 37%
DT 32% -> BME
123 26% -> BME
BS 5% -> BME
PD 4%
DP 3%

[John W.]

DT      - dead, deader, deadest. A reflection of what you've
            been witnessing in the poll results. My best agency in
            2011. My worst agency in 2012. Weren't they sitting
            around 30% late last year? And for those of you who
            are going to respond with a BME or reasonable facimile;
            look at the microstock poll. The truth in black and white.
            THEY know they have to turn the ship around. My suggestion
            would be to re-adopt 2011 tactics.

For me DT has been reasonably steady for months. But a 150% increase in RPD. Less sales (about 25%), less subs but higher returns per sale.


SS: 50%. Good as usual
IS: 10%. Bad. Used to be 25%.
DT: 9%. Steady. Less sales, higher returns.
FT: 9%. Still growing. Closed my US-account there beginning 2011 and started all over with a Euro account.
123RF: 3%. Hardly uploaded anything for over a year there. Earn 40% less now. Will leave them next year.
BS: 8%. BME with my first EL there yesterday. I'd don't know what they changed but I like it!
CS: 1% Good sales sometimes but not this month.
VR: 6% Good month with 2 EL's

[Jo Ann Snover]

Don't yet have IS data for the last couple of days of the month - plus possibly some credit card sales. There is a group of contributors who seem convinced they have credit card sales that don't show up in the CSV files or my_uploads and think it's about 10% of their totals. I do have a handful of sales that show up in the CSV file but are not on my_uploads. Possibly, if the group of contributors is correct, the IS numbers won't be as horrible as they now appear to be

OTOH, what do you expect when you introduce another broken site update right in the busy selling season?

Based on the incomplete IS numbers, September was up over August, led by SS's lovely performance which was 22% higher $$ than August and 39% higher than Sept 2011.The total didn't quite top my BME at SS (which was November 2011) but came close.

Overall, Sept was up 5% over August, but when the PP royalties come in I expect that will be 15% up over August (assuming I get the same as I did for August PP and I expect it will be higher). IS itself was up 7% over August, but that's no cause for celebration as August was wretched.

Given the barren wasteland of desolation that is the IS monthly sales thread, I'm fairly content with a 5% - 15% monthly increase (and my numbers are up over 30% from Sept 2011).

DT returned from the near-dead to be just ailing. They're temporarily #3, but as soon as the IS PP numbers for Sept are available, DT will be bumped down a notch.

Veer had a good month because of an EL, but is otherwise very weak. BigStock looks to have come alive, and is up 10% over August (which was more than double July). PhotoDune had a decent month, just shy of a BME and up 22% over August. Canstock continues to meander along.

[ClaridgeJ]

The PP amount surprised me actually, well over  three figures. Didnt think it was possible.

[pancaketom]

This was my worst month of the year. Lots of sites had returns in the lowest 3 or so for the year and there were no standouts. SS and Alamy had the highest return but they were both below average for the year. DT was back down to pretty sad and 123 RF was the lowest of the year. Pretty disappointing really.

[wordplanet]

September was my best month this year on Alamy and tied for best month this year on SS. (Not my BME on either - that was Nov 2011 for Alamy, and June 2011 for SS)

DT was finally up a bit, and had sales on Bigstock for a change, but wondering if it's worth bothering with any but SS and Alamy any more.
iStock had been climbing for me but now they reject editorial images saying I need a model or property release (for photos shot with a press pass, no less) and my earnings are going nowhere after a steady, if slow, climb.

Overall my 2nd best month this year for stock photo income (but again thanks to non-micro stock licenses, and print sales of my stock photos).
Sales on all sites except for DT and Fotolia have surpassed the total I made by year end 2011, so that's a positive step, and both of those have surpassed where I was @ Sept 30 last year and are pretty close to year end figures without entering into the holiday season, when my sales tend to climb, so I'm hopeful.   

[stockmarketer]

For me, Sept 2012 was...

Down 4% from Sept 2011 (when the crazy EDs started rolling in at SS and I was getting multiple a day... those days are long gone)

Up 8% from Aug 2012

Ranks as my #8 best month of all time... March 2012 was my BME. 

(4 years in microstock)

[JPSDK]

ss: steady in July, August and Sept. End August and begining of September were low.
is: steady on a low level in July and August, ½ in september, last week improving.
dt: dead.
ft: Steady. Improving lately.

Last 2 weeks numbers have gone up on all sites, except for dt.

[steheap]

Pretty good month for me - not my best (which was driven in June by some great Alamy sales), but my second best with total earnings of $1632. Shutterstock, as usual, was the best by a long way, iStock shot up in the past few days to $343, but i"m not sure why. I saw a post above about credit card sales - perhaps it is that. Best site for rapid growth was Warmpicture - our artists co-operative site - with earnings of $29. Much better than many commercial sites and I've only been there a month. If you are an image buyer, please check out Warmpicture. Pond5 photo sales are also doing OK with a better payout than I used to get when I was submitting to them via 123RF. Here are a couple of graphs. More details as usual on my blog.

Steve

[fiftyfootelvis]

I was down 20% from last month on SS. Granted that was my BME, but it was still down substantially from my average. Disappointing for September.

[HerMajesty]

The economy is supposedly in a very bad state and at the same time most people report here BME, or at least a steady rise of earnings. What's so special about this business that it's been completely resistant to problems in the whole economy for the past 5 years ?
For me it was a BME as well. Both on SS and Fotolia (my two best earners ).

[nicku]

The economy is supposedly in a very bad state and at the same time most people report here BME, or at least a steady rise of earnings. What's so special about this business that it's been completely resistant to problems in the whole economy for the past 5 years ?
For me it was a BME as well. Both on SS and Fotolia (my two best earners ).

I believe is simple economics and marketing... in time of economic crisis ( when everybody spends more rationally ) advertising agencies must produce more publicity to be able get the money out of population pockets.

I believe the World economic crisis helped allot the microstock industry.

[ClaridgeJ]

The economy is supposedly in a very bad state and at the same time most people report here BME, or at least a steady rise of earnings. What's so special about this business that it's been completely resistant to problems in the whole economy for the past 5 years ?
For me it was a BME as well. Both on SS and Fotolia (my two best earners ).

We are not selling cars or houses. We are providers of products to possibly the cheapest service in the world. Reccession and world economy is one thing but I am sure that buyers of micro can afford a few cents here and there.

[HerMajesty]

Well, for years the common knowledge was that in time of recession the advertising industry was the "canary in a coal mine". When things were starting to go downhill most companies used to cut marketing spending. So something change here. Either companies figured out that it's the time to increase marketing (there is some logic to it), or they moved from more costly marketing strategies and that's why microstock is doing good.
Or ... the whole structure of the economy shifted to more services, more internet based businesses and this whole shift just happen to occur during the current crisis.

[JPSDK]

The economy is not in a bad state. Take a look at the stock indexes.